I am Spartacus . . .

Sarah Hoyt so writes, "I am Spartacus," and maybe we should all be prepared to declare ourselves Spartacus, as well, and soon. Check it.

The special language of the celebrity life-style . . .

All of a sudden, I noticed. Whenever some minor celebrity permits herself to be photographed without clothing or appearance of shame, the accompanying text invariably describes her as "confident."

I guess they have to feel confident, because otherwise they would merely be bare-assed naked, and anybody can do that. In fact, most of us spend considerable effort to avoid being caught bare-assed naked.

Next up. A female celebrity bursting out with a loud, swampy fart of extended duration will be described as "charitable."

Al Qaida is on the run, we were told . . .

Let's see, now. We've shut down a bunch of embassies and consulates, so any Americans in the area who need our government's help will find the doors locked. We've evacuated embassy staff from Lahore.

Who is on the run, exactly?

What's going down here?

I remember as a little kid when out of the country there'd be beggers. My Dad explained that begging was what they had to do to eat, and they'd be happy to get the dime I had to give. But the deal was, you wouldn't see beggers in the States. At least not in the fifties and sixties. Not that there weren't poor people in the U.S.

That's why President Lyndon Johnson declared a "war" on poverty in the middle of the Vietnam war. He said we could afford both "guns and butter."

Now, there's beggers at all major intersections and at interstate rest stops. Without passing judgement on those with their cardboard signs, I mean, WTF?

It's been about fifty years and billions of dollars on government aid of various kinds and evidently we are losing the war on poverty. What's the chances that government "help" is a big part of the problem?

Recent Obamacare detours . . .

Remember when Pelosi said they'd have to pass Obamacare to find out what was in the bill?

Well they passed it, and then they read it.  Now, Congress and its staffers want no part of it, despite a statement in the law that says they have to participate in the plan.

Obama has now exempted Congress from paying for their own medical coverage under Obamacare, so they're cool, now.

Of course, you know who will pay for their share of the insurance, don't you.

What I want to know, is where do us aroused villagers get pitchforks and torches, like we see in the movies.  Or tar and feathers for that matter.  Amazon? 

I think Obamacare is a bad idea, but many don't.  Nevertheless, even if you think Obamacare is great, can you think of anything that would say Congressmen and their staff should be given a pass?

The self appointed cool kids are all way above this sort of patriotic hickery. . .

Many of us remember the iconic photos around 9/11, and one in particular with firefighters in the rubble with a flag.  Well, it was almost not included in the 9/11 Exhibit because the unqualified dimwits in charge thought it to be too over the top patriotic and American.  They thought we should tone down the patriotism thing a little bit, so as to, well, I don't know what.  Misha's reaction is what we call a righteous rant.  Take a look, but put your coffee down first.

The empire strikes out . . .

Ilya Somin has a box score of the government's losing attempts to stifle rights.

In Horne v. Department of Agriculture, a decision issued in June, the justices unanimously rejected the Obama administration's argument that raisin farmers did not have the right to go to court to contest the seizure of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of raisins. The Fifth Amendment states that the government must pay "just compensation" whenever the government takes private property for "public use." But the administration claimed that farmers could not even raise the takings issue in court without first enduring lengthy delays and paying a $483,000 fine.

Horne was the administration's third unanimous defeat in a property rights case in 18 months. In Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, it claimed that a couple had no right to go to court to seek compensation after the EPA blocked construction of their "dream house."

In Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, it unsuccessfully argued that the Fifth Amendment doesn't require compensation when the federal government repeatedly and deliberately floods property owners' land. Even liberal justices normally skeptical of property rights claims, including one of President Obama's appointees, found these arguments too much to swallow.

The Obama administration has also suffered unanimous defeats in several other important cases.

Last year, the justices rejected the administration's position that the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment does not apply to churches' decisons to hire and fire employees with religious duties, such as teaching theology. Obama appointee Justice Elena Kagan called the administration's position "amazing."

In United States v. Jones, another 2012 case, the justices unanimously rejected the administration's claim that the Fourth Amendment does not restrict the government's authority to attach a GPS tracking device to a car

Degradable bumper stickers . . .

In the last three weeks, as I've rambled through Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina, I've seen no more than a couple dozen Obama stickers.  They've even been vanishing here in Portland.

I'm sure it must be a matter of  sticker material that degrades, as one can still find a Kerry or Gore sticker 'round here, and true Portland progressives would surely not be scraping their bumpers clean.

Right?

Golf vacation . . .

Golf vacation is over.   Four days in North Carolina - nothing but golf, and food, and smoking and drinking, and calling one another names where parental legitimacy was involved or where the named was favorably compared to an organ of elimination . . . and there were no women present but for the ladies serving coffee at the breakfast buffet.

It was great!

I am now back in the world of women.

Inexplicable increase in I.Q. detected . . .

In the last presidential election, it's been reported, about 55% of women voted for Obama. Now, a recent poll shows less than half of all women approve of Obama.

Civilization!!!! .....

We are on vacation and visiting with family in Cincinnati.  We dropped into a grocery store and, wondrous to behold, our stuff was put into plastic bags and I could loop them all over my forearms and make a single trip to the car instead of carrying two bags at a time in my arms with three trips to the car.

Cool!

I know, I know.  In Portland we know that using paper bags is good and plastic bags are evil, but I don't  care.  I like plastic; I'm a wild man and I cannot be restrained.

The Death of DOMA, and another fine mess you've gotten us into . . .

It's the latest, most important news.  DOMA is toast. 

I never knew where Congress got the authority to create a restrictive definition of marriage in the first place.  It sure isn't in the enumerated powers.  What, the interstate commerce clause?  That means if a homosexual couple gets married in a state which permits such marriages, they are married for purposes of federal law, and have the benefits and obligations that arise under federal law. 

Well, if the Defense of Marriage Act is toast, does that mean that states now have to recognize homosexual marriage relationships created under other state's laws?  Or can the states say that a marriage that would be contrary to law in one state isn't automatically made lawful because some other state let it happen under more liberal laws?  In other words, may states now question the legitimacy of actions of other states, when citizens move from state to state?

Further, there is the Prop 8 clusterf*ck the court is dealing with.  California voters passed Prop 8, saying, no homosexual marriage.  Some people sued the state, saying that Prop 8, enforced by the state, would violate some sort of rights they imagined they had, just as if a right is some sort of biological appendage rather than a condition created by government action.  Anyhow, the political masters of California, who didn't like Prop 8 much in the first place mostly because they don't like the idea of citizens getting all uppity and thinking they should be considered, decided not to defend the case brought by the people who were suing to claim Prop 8 was a violation. 

So, how tough is it to win a lawsuit, when the defendant doesn't show up?

To avoid a default position, the original proponents of Prop 8 stepped in and nominated themselves as defendants.  The plaintiffs, suing the state, wanted them kicked out of court, saying, "We aren't suing you, we're suing California and you have no right to be here."  The problem went to the 9th circuit judges who said citizens can defend a lawsuit when the state defendant won't.  Contrarily, the Supreme Court has  ruled that citizens cannot appear and defend if the state, as defendant, won't.

I guess that means that the challenge to Prop 8 will be upheld because the political masters of California are going to take a dive on the issue, and the voters who voted and passed Prop 8 can pretty much go pound sand, for all that they matter.  Governor Brown wants queer marriage in California, and his will be done.

So where does that leave us?  Who the hell knows.  More litigation will ensue, for sure, for sure, and speeches will be made, politicians will weep phony tears, activists of one sort or another will activate, and pulpits will roar with righteousness.  And all the sturm und drang will be in aid of homosexual marriage. 

Hey, what percentage of Americans are exclusively homosexual in the first place?  Maybe 5%, if that?  And what percentage of those want the right to marry?  Certainly not all.  After all, a helluva lot of straight people have determined that marriage isn't all that.  So we have all this attention paid to something that will benefit only a fraction of a very small minority.

Thanks Supremes.  You made the mess worse.  Gah!

I guess that the issues of government surveillance of citizens without probable cause, contrary to the 4th Amendment, can be safely ignored.  And no need to concern ourselves with the politicizing of IRS decision making.  And we needn't be concerned about who decided to let Americans die without even trying to do something about it in Bengahzi.  And nothing to look at when Kathleen Sibelius tries to shake down constituents.  No need to wonder about the EPA's violation of administration rule making rules.  Homeland Security's heavy handed violation of travelers means nothing.  A porous border with the federal government declining to enforce its own laws is something we should welcome in the name of diversity and social progress.  And don't speak of the threat of militant Islamism which has declared war on us and shown over the years that attacks can be made within our borders with impunity.

None of that dreck is all that important, compared to the rights of homosexuals to fulfill their heart's desire to prance down a wedding aisle with a white veil masking a heavy beard, all with the approval and support of loving government busybodies.

Don't get me wrong.  Homosexuals are wronged by the present state of the law.  Well.  Fix that.  Let's get it done clearly and without confusion, and let's stop screwing over the icky queers, if that's our thing, and let's get on with the real challenges to our republic. 

Or could it be that our government masters welcome and promote the distraction provided by minor issues, like homosexual marriage, so that attention will be directed away from some the concerns noted above, all of which arise in the first place mostly because many of our government masters are not fundamentally in favor of a republican form of government which essentially empowers the little people to resist the depredations of solipsistic politicians? 

Nah, surely not that.

Big Alterna . . .

Got some unsolicited stuff in the mail, as we do, now that my bride has subscribed to some information services promoting good health.

It occurs to me that providing for alternative medical practices and ingestible supplements is a big business, bringing in big, big bucks, when you figure that on top of all the stuff being sold, there's a whole arkload of alternative treatment practitioners, healers, spiritual advisors, swamis, consultants, and suchlike, from acupunctuationists to rolfbrokers, to reikipilots, and all notional practitioners in-between.

And every damn one of them shares to following two points.

• They aren't doing what they do or distributing what they deliver for no charge.
• They all hate and despise what they contemptuously call Big Pharma, by which they mean protocols and substances that have been developed with more than a passing familiarity with the scientific method.

I say it's time to recognize that you have a choice between Big Pharma, and Big Alterna.  And your choice ought to be related to efficiency of result, alone, and not the fact that Big Pharma makes big bucks.

In that regard, Big Pharma is indistinguishable from Big Alterna, and don't think otherwise.

But hey, if you believe that a $139.00 hat with earflaps, made out of a sun activated corn silk and mole fur blend derived from ranch-raised moles, will cure migraines and ice-cream headaches, well, go for it.

It probably won't make any difference, in Darwinian terms, anyhow.

The NSA, that is, National Spy Agency . . .

There are reasons for being suspicious of our government.  And keep in mind that being against the government is not the same thing as being against the country.  We're just talking about the guys running the place, you know, the current four branches of government, the judiciary, the legislature, the executive, and the vast unelected civil service.  (Yeah, there's four, that is, one more than your teacher, who didn't know any better, told you about in the seventh grade.)

Let's see.  There's Fast and Furious.  There's Sibelius.  There's Bengahzi.  Then there's the Bengahzi cover-up.  There's the IRS being politicalized.  And there's the NSA wiretapping deal.  There may be more that I've forgotten.  Any of these could be enough to shake up the White House.  After all, with Nixon, the problem was bugging just the Democratic campaign offices, and that was enough.  But the NSA has bugged the entire country, including your voice calls, email, texts, etc.  A ginormously huge data center is being built in Utah to store everything the NSA gets.

And this is potentially the worst of all.  First, I'm pretty sure there are hackers in China and Russia, and maybe Iran, who can't wait to hack into all this NSA data.  If they haven't already.  And of course, we have our own domestic hackers to worry about, not the mention the various government busybodies who are going to check you out.  And if they are collecting information from everybody, then everybody is the potential target, and it has nothing to do with actual guilt or 4th Amendment probable cause. 

Do you think that girl you dumped in your senior year has forgotten about it, now that she works for the Veteran's Administration where you just happen to be applying for benefits?  Let's just check you out.

But that isn't the worst of it because, second, there's a million dedicated, crazy conspiracy-theory paranoids out there, slapping their knee right now and saying, "I knew it!" 

We have a whole lot of crazy people running around loose, since the great psychiatric insight of the seventies -- that the best and most humane treatment for crazy people is to pretend they can function in normal society and to ignore them and their emotional pain until they commit a serious crime that gets them locked up for a time.

So here's a little message for all the crazy people. 

Boys and girls, just because it's true that the NSA really is collecting all sorts of information about everybody, not just foreign transactions, doesn't mean you haven't been crazy all this time.  You just caught a lucky break, but you are still crazy.  Even though all the electronic data is being collected, the government is still not spying on you and watching what you do through the light bulbs, not now and never was

At least not the old kind.

I'm not so sure about those new curly compact florescent kind.

Can you say "ersatz," boys and girls? . . .

I drink no-fat milk.  I use whole wheat spaghetti noodles and pizza dough.  I eat low fat cheese.  I use turkey sausage, not pork.  One morning, for breakfast, my wife made "pancakes" using grated apple, banana, and egg.  (They were good.)  I use artificial sweetener.  My hamburgers have no burger in them, so they have soy and nuts instead.  I think the little bits of bacon in my salad are really flavored bits of brown styrene.  My buttery popcorn involves no actual butter.

I could have teeth "whiter than white" by use of an inexpensive product.

My shirts don't need ironing after washing. 

My car shifts its own gears.  The gasoline in its tank comes partly from corn alcohol.  The fabric of my pants comes from an oil well.

So, it occurs to me that I am living an inauthentic life.  And I'm not alone in that.

Is it then any wonder that we can hear the pitchman on television say, "Get the facts, just try it for yourself," and not even hear the  clanking of the logic underneath that statement? 

All the phony we live with has nourished our stupid quotient.  (If you can have an intelligence quotient, I.Q., then you can have a stupid quotient.)

So, don't get me started on politicians.

Bad moon rising . . .

IRS is being sued for going far beyond the scope of a search warrant and seizing all sorts of patient treatment records, far in advance of 4th Amendment limits. 

Keep in mind that IRS is given enforcement obligations for Obamacare. 

If IRS won't "play by the rules," why are the citizens required to report honestly, on penalty of criminal punishment? 

Are we getting closer to when massive and pervasive civil disobedience is in order?

Freedom of speech . . .

The Homeowners Association said he couldn't have an American flag in his yard, so, as a good neighbor, he took the flag down and freshened the look of his home.  Take a look.

That'll show 'em who's boss . . .

So the acting head of IRS had turned in his notice that he was quitting in June.  in response to the IRS scandals - one of the four breaking out in Washington at the moment - the President fired him.  Two weeks before he was going to leave on his own.

The President wants us to know that sometimes doing the right thing means being a hard-ass.

Happy 21st Century Mothers Day

Mothers Day.  Once, 'twas an honored and harmless commercial tradition of coercing males to spend money on useless trinkets, flowers, and over-priced buffets.

Now, in the politics is everything age, it is a splendid opportunity to increase breast cancer "awareness," whateverthehell "awareness" is supposed to actually mean.  Also, a good time to celebrate and encourage abortion rights for reluctant breeders - they's kinda the same thing as mothers, right?

Fathers Day?  The kids spend five minutes crayoning a card. 

Increased awareness of prostate cancer?

Cue the sound of crickets.

Hey, make me a sammitch . . .

Washington State Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles

is sponsoring a six year effort to go through all the laws of Washington and remove all mentions of men, males, and suchlike so as to make all official language gender neutral.  It's going to be a six year process to bugger the language so as to make men aware of their reduced status in a modern world run by women who are mighty.  Hear them roar.

So, instead of watchman, we'll have watchperson.  Also, there'll be firepersons on duty and people can make a living or just be fisherpersons for a hobby.  Instead of penmanship, we'll have something horrible like good write-itude.

I guess Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles has checked around and satisfied herself that having a hyphenated name entitles her to a mandate.  I mean persondate.

And for manhood and womanhood, I guess we could go with "convexity" and "concavity" to refer to traits normally associated to distinguish gender behaviors.

One can make jokes about this endlessly, but I'm pretty sure Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles would not "get" any of them. 

The sad thing is that this sort of effort to achieve gender neutrality in the language can only grow out of a sense of inferiority.  I suspect that women who are comfortable with themselves don't get their ears hurt when they hear the word "fireman."